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Kutiman Rules !

My GL Misha ran up stairs the other night to my lil office and pointedly said – “You have to see this !” – Now, she is skeptical of some of my online interests, so, for her to get so enthusiastic about something in the online world makes me stand up and pay attention !

If you’ve ever posted a video on YouTube, then Kutiman is coming for you. On Mar. 7, the Jerusalem-born DJ (whose offline name is Ophir Kutiel) launched ThruYOU, a project with a simple enough premise: to create visual symphonies using random YouTube footage of school concerts, piano lessons, weirdly intimate soliloquies and American Idol-esque performances uploaded by people across the world. In one of his creations, dubbed “This Is What It Became,” the 26-year-old artist juxtaposes clips of a “Glitch Monster Love Bot,” a tutorial called “How to Play Conga Drums,” a dimly lit monologue for the legalization of marijuana and a demo for a toy keyboard/ tape deck that YouTuber CosmoHelectraStudio, who posted the video of the gadget, describes as “a very bad sound” and “a poor tape player.”

And that’s why Kutiman’s viral orchestras are so fascinating. Unlike Philadelphia mash-up guru Gregg Gillis (a.k.a Girl Talk), who mixes hit pop songs and familiar classics, many of the YouTube clips selected by Kutiman, when viewed apart from one another, are … well… bunk. Who wants to watch — or, for that matter, hear — a vintage fire siren wailing away on a piece of plywood? Or a Cuban percussion instrument made from a gourd. OK, that one is kinda cool, but footage of a trombone recital recorded by an unsteady, possibly intoxicated cameraman? No, thank you. In the Israeli maestro’s hands, though, such raw material becomes … well… awesome. See for yourself: